May 17, 2018

Render unto Moloch that which is Moloch's

Sidewalk chalk and a little imagination can go a long way.

Here's a true story about me: I'm petty and vindictive. This has caused problems for me in the past, but I'm making a maximum effort attempt at channeling my pettiness into more constructive directions. The most recent occasion that somebody got my goat was actually a culmination of probably six months' frustrations: Disrespectful neighbors and more generally community members who have no respect for private property and public cleanliness.

I live in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, at the edge of the west side of town close to the border crossing into the USA and just a few blocks away from one of the few steel plants. This part of town is called Steelton (Steel Town), but it's also called the edge of the ghetto -- I suppose you could say I live in the "G?" The great thing about living on the edge of the ghetto is that property taxes are quite low, but the not great thing about living on the edge of the ghetto is dealing with the frequent turn-over of renters who absolutely do not care about the community.

The landlord who owns the building next to my own plays musical chairs with her two rental units, and I don't know how she does it, but she somehow manages to rent to the shittiest people over and over again. Maybe she's not vetting her applicants and she deserves the way they treat her rental units? Maybe she just doesn't have a lot of choice in applicants and has to accept whomever she can get? Or maybe her apartments are really shitty and she just doesn't care about the quality of people who live there? Whatever the case, she manages to consistently rent to people who think that "Private Property - No Parking Allowed" signs are only for decoration, they can throw their garbage wherever they want (including into my yard), and they can let their animals shit wherever they want and not clean it up. Combine the steady parade of uncaring renters with a public lane-way runs along the rear of my house, and that means I also get a steady parade of dog-walkers who let their dogs shit on the grassy margins as well as people who think it's totally okay to discard their trash in the lane-way.

All this results in a combination of circumstances which creates a steady accumulation of animal feces and other rubbish outside my back door. I mean, it's everything you can imagine: styrofoam coffee cups, plastic drink cups, empty pizza boxes, syringes and needles, used napkins, old pens, broken bottles, whitefish, ruined children's toys, plastic straws, and dog shit. So much dog shit... I mean, there are even plastic bags of dog shit that the dog's owner took the trouble of collecting and even tying shut, but then still decided to throw the neat-and-tidy, tied-shut bag of dog shit into the margins of the lane-way.

I can't even tell you how angry this makes me. This is my home. I live here. I get up every day, and when I look out the window I get to see the occasional rubbish and dog shit discarded by my shitty neighbors, as well as the frequent rubbish and dog shit discarded by all the other people who think that the lane-way behind my back door is a public dumping ground. These kinds of people have no respect for community and I don't know how they can look at the dog shit and litter piling up every day and think, "This is okay." It's dirty and disgusting, it smells terrible, and if it were up to me I'd force these shitty litterbugs to eat the piles they left behind.

The first time it became evident that the next-door renter was letting his dogs run off-leash and drop their turds wherever they felt inspired to do so, my approach was to return to sender: I just scooped them with a shovel and threw them back over the property line. When it kept happening, I asked him to pick up after his dogs. Evidently, asking somebody to do the right thing was the wrong decision because he wanted to fight me over it. I'm like, "It's your dogs' shit, so why should I have to clean it up?" When he threatened to vandalize my car -- because apparently that's what broke-ass renters who don't own a car like to do when somebody tells them to be minimally decent toward their neighbors -- I called the police to have him trespassed from my property and the Humane Society who got all up in his business about keeping his dogs leashed. Why do people have to be like that? This is why we can't have nice things.

What this experience taught me is that asking people to be responsible in response to a problem of their own creation only produces results if said people have any decency or self-respect. In this case, it turned out I was wasting my time and it was unreasonable of me to expect that anything productive would come from attempting to hold shitty children accountable for their shitty childishness.

And it may sound silly to you, but while swimming in my anger what came to mind was the expression, "Render unto Caeser the things that are Caeser's." I saw all this trash accumulating, and thought of the Lord of the Flies who dwells in the trash heap of Gehenna and Moloch who also has been said to dwell in that same place, also called valley of Hinnom. In my mind, Caeser in the aforementioned expression was replaced by another authority: "Render unto Moloch the things that are Moloch's." The way it came to me, the Lord of the Flies is a gatekeeper who inhabits the burning fires of the trash-heap through which human offerings are sent to be devoured by Moloch.

If you can see it my way, it seems that the Lord of the Flies and Moloch are rightfully owed certain offerings, and to deny them these offerings by discarding them outside their domain serves only to invite them to expand their kingdom of rubbish to include the community where I live. If the Lord of the Flies and Moloch were real, I'd surely have no desire to meet them. They are owed offerings of filthy rubbish and worthless children, and I'm happy to see that they receive them.

So it occurred to me that if I'm getting no results by emptying my wrath onto people who cannot be persuaded by wrath, then I should channel my considerable anger and frustration into something more productive: a Satanic ritual in which they themselves would be offered up as the sacrifice. To achieve this goal, I decided to destroy the one thing I could: the piles of filth and rubbish. If I were a character in the Star Wars universe, I'd absolutely give myself over to the dark side. Wrath can be productive if it's allowed to flow toward worthwhile ends.

So last weekend I focused my hate onto the destruction of the filth that's taken hold outside my back door. I took a rake, a shovel, and a trash bag out into the lane-way and pulled out all the dog shit and trash that had been left there. I even found a dead bird that looked in sore need of going under the soil. I wish I could tell you that the act of cleaning the lane-way was cathartic, but it only intensified my anger. Every turd I scooped was a reminder that I'm living next to people who do not care at all about shitting almost literally where they eat. Every piece of rubbish was a reminder that there are people who think it's okay to make other people live in squalor for the sake of their own convenience. All these things I raked managed to fit into a single black trash-bag, and the task done I took a can of white spray paint and marked it with the alchemical symbol of earth for the Lord of the Flies. As for the offering to Moloch, that would come later...

.. after I had constructed an altar specifically for the purpose of this ritual. Having collected the filth and rubbish from the lane-way, I purchased some side-walk chalk and started illustrating my altar. I needed the daylight to see what I was drawing, and if initial responses are any indication of the outcome then I suppose they were promising because a large grid of occult markings in bright chalk did really caught people's eyes and did wonders to get drivers to slow down instead of speeding through the back alley. It had occurred to me that safety, day-glow orange paint would also make people slow down and take notice, but day-glow chalk would be counter-productive to the final working of this ritual in which after the chanting and hand-waving is finished I sweep up all the chalk, dirty, and sand on the pavement and then surreptitiously scatter it around the doorways of known offending neighbors.

As for the format of the ritual, it closely followed the standard destruction ritual featured in the Satanic Bible. There were a few points of improvisation, but me being who I am I care more about the sizzle than the steak. Hilariously to me, the biggest push-back I encountered on this ritual came from theistically-minded occultists who really got their hair tied in knots because I wasn't using their correct seals, their correct words, or their correct execution. Satanism has been pretty damn well defined for over 50 years, but for some reason a lot of occultists just can't wrap their minds around the fact that Satanic ritual is a lot like purging: it allows me to figuratively vomit out the anger and frustration that inhibit my ability to focus and pursue other outcomes. As for the Harry-Pottery, I'm willing to indulge in the fantasy that this will really accomplish something. If the old gods Beelzebub and Moloch really do exist, then the city landfill would be where to find them. If an offering suitably marked and dutifully given at best magically solves my problem or at worst just makes me feel better about the whole thing, I'm okay with the outcome either way.

Having said that, though, there is a method to my madness. The image displayed at the very top of this blog post is not consistent with any other occult practices, nor is it intended to be because what you see is my idea of artistic improvisation. Want to know why I chose the elements that I did? Read on:

The bull's head representing Moloch is evident at the top of the chalked altar, and that's repeated by the horned idol you see by the fence. Three red arrows descend from the head of Moloch toward the left, central, and right portions of the altar to show where I want things to flow.

The trash bag which contains all the refuse I collected is marked with the alchemical symbol for the element of earth, and represents the final destination to which offering is destined. Dust to dust, and so on.

The vertical white lines broken by off-angled orange lines are my idea of a protective barrier. My house is behind that fence, so I create that as my way of showing that nothing passes that direction.

The left arrow from Moloch moves into my command to "Eat the shameful person." There's a specific person whom I'll be very glad to see eaten by Moloch, and I rather doubt it will happen, but whatever -- it's the thought that counts, you know what I mean?

Beneath that is my command to "Sleep with the unclean." This is flanked on the left by a couple repetitions of "Fuck You." On the bottom left, there're the words, "Lord of the Flies. I think the sentiment is clear.

The right arrow from Moloch moves into my command, "Rule in Gehenna," the burning trash heap where in Biblical times was found garbage, corpses, unwanted babies, and other refuse. This is my way of saying that I understand that there are things in life that are hideous, disgusting, and revolting, and I want to maintain the boundary between them and me. To the right of this are more repetitions of "Fuck You."

Just beneath that is the command to "Make them eat shit." On the bottom right, there're the words "Lord of the Abyss." Leviathan is a worthy inclusion in any Satanic ritual, especially when performing a curse.

The middle arrow from Moloch moves into the command, "Give unto Lord Moloch his property." Beneath that is a square of power to contain the eight-pointed chaos star within. There are additional counter-positioned spokes against the Chaos star which to me represent explosive force, and in my mind the whole central square is a brittle cage preparing to explode upon the completion of the ritual.

The square links to the candles at the left and right sides which are my way of feeding fire to the central cage. The four grey areas you see extending from the candles are where I'll put my ritual tools: the Satanic Bible, a ritual knife, a ritual bell, and a good old bottle of beer for libation and spitting upon my offerings. As for me, I'll sit directly between the two circles on top of the words "Strength (comes) to me, the greatest strength." Get it? I'm on a seat of power.

Finally, the blue tridents are my idea of psychic shit-catchers: the barbed tines catch anything they touch, but because of the angle release nothing. This feeds power to my implements which sit just behind them.

The left and right edges of the altar are illustrated with lightning bolts which radiate left and right toward the east and west ends of the alley where all the refuse I collected was littered.

You can read the standard ritual format in the Satanic Bible if you want to get an idea how the performance of this ritual was structured and performed. As for the intention set forth in the ritual, I offered the trash bag of rubbish and dog shit to the Lord of the Flies because that is what Beelzebub is owed, and to Moloch I offered the names of the rude, immature renters. If they can't be bothered to act like responsible adults, then I'll make them pass through the burning fires of Gehenna watched by the Lord of the Flies and offer them as unwanted children for Lord Moloch to devour.

There are occultists who really don't approve of how I'm performing this ritual, but they seem either unwilling or unable to understand the Satanic approach to ritual and the fact that I place more emphasis on the performative artistry of my work than the spiritual precision. The only thing I didn't like about this set-up is that I was performing the ritual outside the fence of my backyard and could be seen by anybody who was coming or going. Public ritual isn't conducive for really letting go of self awareness, but whatever -- I work with what I have, and there's no way I could spew my libation over the altar inside. Way too much to clean up.

As it happened, the neighbors closest to my heart for the purposes of this ritual did make an appearance. During the close of the ritual while chanting a suitable Enochian key about dung-filled branches of lamentation, the neighbor and his girlfriend plus their two dogs came out for their evening walk to drop some more turds at the edge of the back alley. I could hear them having a good laugh, but I didn't break stride. As far as I'm concerned, their appearance exceeded my wildest dreams because they effectively presented themselves as offerings at the key and most critical moment of the ritual. It brings me pleasure to indulge in the fantasy that Moloch will eat these shitty little children and remove them from my life.

As for the results of the ritual and the question that's always asked -- DID IT WORK? -- I can say both yes and no. Immediately after the ritual, I felt a great relief. The consuming anger and frustration that distracted me from more productive goals is well and truly gone. I mean, it's completely gone and I even have a hard time digging it up again. This ritual was one of the few times that I've managed to achieve a complete and total purge of unwanted emotions, and they have not returned. I'm skeptical that I performed any Harry Potter-y, but it's fair to say that this ritual of greater magic did in fact change my reality because it changed me. The shitty renters are still alive (and I'm sure no more inclined to clean up after themselves,) and the back lane-way is still frequented by people who can't be bothered to responsibly dispose of their rubbish, but whatever -- is it still a problem if it no longer feels like a problem?

After I finished the ritual, I dripped some wax from the candles over the chaos star in the middle, swept what chalk and beer-spat sand I could into a hot-foot powder that got spread around some choice locations. After that, I got a bucket of rainwater from the sump in the basement and washed it all away. The next morning, the only remaining evidence that the altar and its attendant ritual ever existed are the scatterings of sand and chalk where certain people are known to walk. The trash bag of filth and rubbish was suitably marked and offered, and this past Wednesday was collected by sanitation workers and ultimately delivered to the city landfill. The goat idol, striking bell, ritual knife, and Satanic Bible went back onto their usual shelves...

... and as for the empty beer bottle used to pour libations, that went into the recycling.